Xbox Live might come to iPhone, Android?

Posted January 9, 2012 - 10:17
by
Mark Raby

One of the most distinguishing and highly differentiated features of Windows Phone might lose its Windows Phone exclusivity.

A few eagle-eyed Microsoft onlookers happened upon a new job listing at the company's official website, and it states pretty clearly that Xbox Live functionality is probably going to expand beyond Microsoft's proprietary mobile platform.

The job description, which is for a software engineer, includes the following function: "define, design and implement Xbox LIVE mobile experiences on Windows Phone, iOS and other platforms."

"Combining Xbox LIVE experiences together with mobile devices has enabled many new opportunities and interesting user scenarios such as location based gaming and social networking, avatar with presence, etc," the job ad continues.

Obviously, being able to sign into your Xbox Live account from your phone, earn achievements, chat with friends, and play games side-by-side other Xbox Live gamers is one of the most defining feature on Windows Phone.

So even though expanding Xbox Live is no doubt a great thing for Microsoft's gaming division, the question is whether it will hurt its mobile division.

In the background, there's Sony, which is set to roll out an ambitious Android-based mobile gaming platform that will connect to device like the Playstation Vita, and with the limited user base of Windows Phone, Microsoft is likely worried that Sony will become the key player in mobile game connectivity.

However, as this job listing is just now surfacing, it might be a while before this actually amounts to anything.